“We should go look,” Kieri said. “I don’t even know where the border with Fintha is or what kind of border watch the Sea-Prince keeps. I wish I’d had more time to talk with him when he came for the wedding.”

“He didn’t seem eager for that,” Arian said. “He left the very next day after the wedding, you recall.”

“Yes, but I thought that was because his elven escort wanted to get him back through the Ladysforest.” He sighed. “I just can’t believe it’s gone, after all the ages the elves lived there and nourished it. The taig here feels no different. We should go look, Arian. I want to preserve as much as possible, and I can’t do that if I don’t know what it is.”

“I agree,” she said. “But we can’t both leave; if trouble comes to Tsaia, one of us must be here. You should go; I had my long trip earlier, and I’d just as soon stay here.” She set her hands over the bulge of her pregnancy, now clear to see.

The transition from the forest open to humans to the formerly closed Ladysforest was immediately obvious as Kieri crossed that line. Though Kieri had thought the Lyonyan forest astonishing when he first saw it, the Ladysforest, even without the Lady, had a magical quality. The taig here had additional layers of complexity, a rich confidence, that he had not felt before.

As he rode on, the enchantment grew. Here was beauty such as he had never imagined let alone seen. Nothing at all like the clipped and tended gardens of men … no obvious design … except that everywhere he looked the forest seemed both completely natural and artfully designed, every detail perfect. The trees rose around him, boles as heavy as the inner ring of the King’s Grove but even taller. Sunlight pierced the canopy in flickering shafts, each picking out a detail: a leaf here, a flower there, a tiny perfect mushroom growing from the bole of a great tree, a frond of fern poised gracefully at the verge of a tiny waterfall. He felt the immensity of its age and the freshness of each leaf and flower. Everything made a pattern … patterns in patterns, and all the patterns made beauty. Yet he saw no sign of artifice. Nothing needed trimming; there was never too much of this or too little of that.

It came to him that this had been achieved not by the tools of men, by steel or stone … but by song alone. This was the work of the Sinyi, their proper work. Every living thing here throve, fully healthy; every living thing achieved its full beauty. Surely this was still the elvenhome as it had been. He wondered why the elves didn’t recognize it.